Making Orange Marmalade

Making orange marmalade

by Utkrishta Mulmi

15 January 2017

Photographs by Shaswat Badal, Utkrishta Mulmi

Today we made orange marmalade or orange jam. We started making jam after we had lunch. At first I took some oranges in a bowl, washed them and peeled the oranges. While I was doing that, everyone else was outside cutting up some lemons. After I finished washing the oranges, I took them outside and joined the others. Pallav sir used a knife to cut the top and bottom parts of the orange. After that he gave me the peels of the oranges and told me to scrape off the white layering under the peels with a knife. While I was scraping the white layering Nitya was taking notes of what we were doing and the rest of them were taking out the strands of the oranges and slowly taking out the seeds without squeezing them. A while later Pallav sir told Abin to get a knife and help me scrape the peels because only work would be fast if two people work on the same thing than one.

Scraping the peels was more difficult than I had expected. After scraping the white layer we could see lots of small and tiny circles kind of small patterned shapes below the white layering in the peel. Since we did not have much oranges Pallav sir told Laxmi dai to go and buy some more oranges and they started to argue about getting the oranges.

Finally, he went to buy the oranges. While he went to buy the oranges, we kept on doing what we were doing. Pallav sir also helped scrape the white layering but the knife I had was not a good knife for scraping the white layering in the peel so he asked Bhagwati maam for another knife to scrape the white layering in the peel. she brought the knife and gave it to me.

I got curious to see if it was sharp since it looked like it was made from plastic and I did a stupid thing and tested on myself. In order to check if it was sharp enough I tried it in my finger to see if it cuts or not. And guess what??? Yes, It was sharp and I did cut my finger and ran to the washroom to wash my hands. A lot of blood was flowing but it stopped after sometime.

By then Laxmi dai was back from the market with more oranges and I helped to wash those oranges and took it outside where everyone was working. Now, Nitya, Abin and Pallav sir scraped the white layering of the peel but not me since Pallav sir told me not to use a knife. so I clicked some photographs on the orange camera.

We were halfway to making the marmalade while Shaswat, Sheelu, Kusma and Bhawana maam went to make lapsi pickle. Abheek, Nitya, Abin, Neeva, Susmita, Pallav sir and me were working on the orange marmalade. After they were finished scraping Pallav sir cut small and thin strips of the peels and put them in a bowl. Then he cut the slices of the oranges into halves and put it in a bowl. Then Pallav sir told Sheelu, Sarah and me to take the bowl with the cut oranges and ask Sabita didi to grind it in a mixer. We took it inside the kitchen and asked sabita didi to grind it. She washed the mixer and kept the oranges and in a while the oranges were grinded. After the oranges were grinded we also grinded the peel and more oranges. We then poured all the grinded juice into a cooking pot and put it on the stove and set it to heat. After a few minutes we added some sugar into the pot.